Edward J

Yes, Roundup has been used for decades on regular crops, and as others have commented, has also been used by home gardeners. It is considered the safest of all herbicides available on the market, barring perhaps citrus-based ones but even those are so concentrated they require protective gear during application. Over a dozen people have tried to commit suicide by drinking Roundup or other glyphosate-based herbicides (god knows why, because the surfactants make it sweet, I suppose) and all but one failed. Dogs have eaten glyphosate crystals (Labs will eat anything) and survived. Yes, small and mid-size farmers can and sometimes do grow crop for seed, but the process of hulling and sifting the crop is laborious and requires special equipment, so it is more cost-effective to buy seed from agribusinesses who specialize in crop propagation. Specialists also have the laboratories to test seed and assure quality, and they have proper storage protocols to assure the seed does not get moldy or infected during storage. You may be interested to know that GMO seed is more expensive, and growing a GMO crop is entirely optional on the part of the farmer. Seed, water, fuel, chemicals and labor are the top 5 production inputs for most grain crop farmers. So if the cost of seed goes up dramatically, the farmer has to figure out how to reduce one of the other inputs and/or increase productivity. Thank you. My background is from the Canadian praries, so I am familiar with GMO's, round up, and lawsuits. Some more questions then, Are there then, some GMO crops that are formulated that can not, will not, bear seed? Are there some GMO crops that are formulated so they MUST be used with round-up, or the plant will not reach maturation?

That is true, but what about now? Do you know what purposes roundup is used for now?

My concerns regarding GMO's are the following: -The direct link between GMO and "Roundup", can one exist without the other? -Can a farmer generate his own seed with last year's crop, or is s/he dependant on the mnfctr for providing him/her with next year's crop seed?

I'm in agreement with Kerry on this, I think the ganache has settled, or shrank after capping, and that the cap itself is too thin. Here's what I'd do... -Look at my ganache recipie and see if I can formualte it a bit "thicker", or with less moisture content -Fill my cavities slightly less -Vibrate the molds after I've ladled on the capping chocolate. -Scrape at 90 degrees only once and as a backup plan -pipe on the capping chocolate on one tray to see if there's any difference

I guess I should have clarified, I meant a commercial 80 qt steam kettle--the kind that is bolted to floor and comes with a drain. Manoevering anything heavier than a 20 qt pot on the stove is hard on the back, hard on the handles of the pot, and just crappy all-way around. Plus it eats up valuable stovetop space that is needed during service time.

Usually, an 80 qt stock pot for 50 lbs. These are big enough for a small-ish person to hide in. Most practical thing to do would be to parcel out the bones into 4 or 5 parcels, work with one parcel, and freeze the rest. If the bones are fresh, this works well, but if frozen, it can be a problem

Volatile oils and zest. You can get some good natural volatile oils, a bit of cream of tarttar helps with the acidity.

"Boiled Linseed oil" a.k.a. BLO isn't really boiled, it has the addition of metalic driers in it. This, I'm guessing is pretty toxic, and have only applied it to outdoor furniture. Raw linseed oil has nothing added to it, but isn't popular becasue it takes so long to dry. It is commonly available though. The by-prodcut of flaxseed oil/linseed oil is the stalk fibers, a.k.a "linen"....

Flaxseed oil also goes by another name--- Linseed oil.....

A dragee is usually sugar coated. How about "Dinosaur eggs"? "hazlenut(or almond or walnut) pearls"?

Looks like the filling is extruded, and run through an enrobing machine. Can't see the whole cigar, but I'm betting it is rolled off the conveyor belt while still soft and rolled again until it dries. No one says you can't do the same with a piping bag and a home made double-extra-wide fork.....

Cocoa nibs contain cocoa butter, not oils, and cocoa butter itself doesn't have much flavour. The flavour comes from the solids, but I really have no idea if it is alcohol soluable or not. That being said, everyone knows that hot cocoa is just hot water and cocoa powder (finely ground cocoa nibs with 88%-95% of the cocoa butter removed) and it has chocolate flavour. Sounds like a fun project though.

Can't say I'm a fan of RR or have even watch whole episodes of her show, but yes, she does work hard for the money, and I respect her for that. That being said, she does have the public's eye and ear. Some may view this as a luxury, some as a responsibility. As I have stated in my above posts, learning and using basic knife skills allows you to purchase higher quality cuts of meat at lower costs--if you can remove bones; to purchase whole vegetables or fruits cheaper than precut and packaged--if you can cut them into reasonably smaller pieces. So I feel that Ms. Ray does have a responsibility to at least demonstrate this skill to her audience. I don't think tourne'd root vegetables is a must, but how to remove the bones from a double breast of chicken (and what the cost difference is at the supermarket) would be a good thing.

For arrivistes, myself included, a really good knife is a bit of a status symbol. It tells other people (and yourself) that you're not some jackass who watches cookery shows when there's nothing good on the other channels; you're The Real Thing. Anyway, the general public (including people who frequent white tablecloth restaurants) aren't really "foodies," much less gear-obsessed technicians like we get here. There's not that many of us but we sure spend a lot of money, so it makes sense for people to cater to us. And boy do we like to talk about knives, so there probably -seem- to be a lot more of us than there actually are. (You're into machine tools, right? At my shop we have a worn-out, second-rate, South American South Beach clone for a tool lathe, and it does everything I need it to; that doesn't stop every cack-handed garage shop hobbyist from slobbering over a Hardinge HLVH [which I think is distinctly inferior to the Monarch 10EE, but that is beside the point and even further off-topic]) EDIT: What I'm getting at is, don't assume the GP cares about high-end knives just because a relative handful of people on foodie forums post endlessly about them. I'd be willing to bet a fair amount of money there's more people dicing onion with a steak knife than with a nice gyuto, right this minute. For arrivistes, myself included, a really good knife is a bit of a status symbol. It tells other people (and yourself) that you're not some jackass who watches cookery shows when there's nothing good on the other channels; you're The Real Thing. Oh dear... I was afraid of that.... The expression "Clothes don't make the man" is fitting here. A knife is junk a hunk of steel that may or may not have a sharp edge. What really counts is how you handle the knife and what you are capable of doing with it. I don't need a 4or 5 hundred dollar knife to cut "rustic" vegetables. I have, however produced, thousand of dollars worth of fruit, vegetable, and other platters, sliced gawd knows how many fish and meat portions--both raw and cooked, and I dunno how many thousands of portions of various soups, all with simple Victorinox knives (over a 30 yr period, that is...) When working in S.E Asia I worked with cooks who could out-knife me with even cheaper carbon steel cleavers. It's a humbling experience to watch a 70 yr old man bone out a quail from the back with a dollar-store paring knife that he keeps sharp by "honing" it on the back of plate. No, an expensive knife doesn't make you the "real thing", knife skills do...

Ahhh.. the wonders of mechanization... Well, hand cranked apple peelers have been around since the mid 1800's, rudimentary slicers for the sole purpose of making saurkraut have been around since the 1500's, the mandoline has been around for at least 100 years, and yet, it is only now, and only because FN and others decree that when choosing a Chef (actor/entertainer?)decent knife skills do not matter one bit? Surely you must have noticed others, like Annabelle posting on this thread that if they are going to an expensive restaurant, they want the knife skills, just as they want the plating/presentation and creativity when they pay for a meal. I find nothing the matter with some mechanization for food products that are needed in large volumes, as this is pure grunt work. It is far more economical to run a 50 lb sack of onions through a slicing attachment on the Hobart that it would be to do it by hand. As I have said before, and I repeat again, yes you can buy pre-cut vegetables, but you will pay much, much,more for that item compared to whole fruits/veg/ meat, you will suffer quality losses (usually some form of preservation/anti-oxidant is required) and will have a lot of packaging to deal with. So if FN wants to wow us with creativity, presentation, and stress levels, I don't see why decent knife skills can't be part of the program...

Did you watch Saving Private Ryan? Huge-budget movie with big-name director and cast, but the beachstorming scenes are purposely shot to suggest crappy handheld cameras and grainy old film. It tells you that you're watching something real, because this is the style in which we're used to seeing things that are real. Had the whole thing been shot with Steadicam and high-def digital camera, the result would not have been as affecting. The same principle applies here. John Q. Citizen can get perfectly uniform shoestrings from the frozen foods department at the grocery store. At a nice restaurant, he expects some guy in a funny white hat to slice his potatoes, even if he can't see it for himself. One way to suggest that they're hand-cut in the kitchen rather than scooped out of a bag ready to fry is to cut them "badly." So it's not such an advantage to get them perfect, every single time. I make no judgement about this. Tastes change and the hospitality industry has to keep up with its customers' preferences, even if it means penalizing people who learned how to do things the "proper" way. Still have trouble comprehending, and I haven't even seen the movie. Look, knife skills are a skill, nothing more, nothing less. I compare it to fixing a flat tire on a bike. From when my kids started to learn how to ride I always fixed their flats, showed them a zillion times how, but they never thought it important. Until the day my daughter got a flat on her bike far away from home, which was also the day I was out of town... Look, a good artist--a painter, for example, has to master various techniques: Perspective, shadowing, proportions, colours, etc.. If the artist can not master them, their art suffers, but more importantly creativity suffers because they will purposely avoid projects that incorporate techniques they never mastered. So it is with cooking, knife skills are a skill to be mastered, just as with learning to saute propely, to braise, make a decent pie dough, or bake a decent cake. If I can't dice an onion properly, I can't use diced onions in sauces, soups, meatloaf, or even salsa; I might rely on pre-diced or frozen onions, but these have quality issues. I might go cow-abunga with a knife and a fresh onion, gripping the knife like a club high over the cutting board, like I was splitting firewood and be rewarded with one part onion mush and two parts onion chunks of various sizes. As a bonus to mastering knife skills, you are able to purchase whole fruits and vegetables and not be limited in your choices becasue they don't come pre-cut, pre-peeled or frozen, you are able to butcher whole birds and fish, and you are not constrained in your creativity because you have mastered the skill. Face it, cooking is also a skill, a life skill, and mastering a knife is just one small part of the cooking skill, albeit an important one.

The store is called MEC (Mountain equipment co-op) and has a several locations across Canada. There are several models to choose from: 1) GSI Personal Java Press 2)Buzz line Desk press coffee press (I have this model) 3)Big Sky Bistro Coffee Press 4)GSI Commuter Java Press

At my local camping equipment store there is a large s/s mug version of the french press, doubled walled s/s with an all-nylon plunger base. I've been using it at work for about 6 mths now, nothing but compliments on it's construction. I think there's an "accessory" for it, an extra top that has a built in, hand operated coffee grinder that grinds directly into the mug.

I have trouble understanding this. For a residential kitchen, yes, you can purchase ready-cut vegetables, but they are much more expensive compared to whole vegetables/fruit, generate extra packaging, and have quality issues. Chopped garlic in a jar, anyone? And while there are machines to prep food (food processor comes to mind) I find more time is spent assembling,dissasembling and cleaning such machines then would be spent preparing the same item with a chef's knife. Even at home it makes much more financial sense to buy bone-in chicken breasts and take the bone out myself then it would be to buy boneless chicken breasts. Whole salmon, head on, is much cheaper than buying fillets, even when you calculate the loss of the head, skin, and bones. For commercial kitchens. I have purchased pre-peeled potatoes and pre-peeled onions, but I cut them myself. I find that pre-cut vegetables suffer quality issues, and while there are better qualities to buy, you have to deal with extra cost and packaging.

All of the above are great suggestions, and here is another one. You don't need to replace your cabinets--just the doors! It is the doors that take the most abuse and the most seen. If you are fortunate enough to have stock IKEA cabinets already in your home, you can swap out doors, I think IKEA has over 30 types of doors to choose from. You can re-use all the existing hardware or replace just the handles/knobs. Even if you don't have IKEA cabinets, it is still cheaper to get new/custom made doors or drawer fronts and stick them on your existing cabinets than it is to replace everything. Also, replacing doors doesn't need a contractor or installer, just a bit of your time.....

My gut feelings echo many above - who in this day & age cares about uniform pieces? I think flavor has become the bottom line criterion. As to mashing up a fish or piece of meat in an attempt to debone or the like that of course is horrid. For something simple like a chicken vegetable soup, size uniformity plays as big a role as flavour does. If the vegetables look like they were thrown in a food processor, then they probably were. For knife skills in regards to simple butchery As a Chef and owner, if I get a case of whole chickens in, I know that: 1) the price per kg/lb whole chicken is cheaper than pre-fabricated 2)I can get the level of trim I want 3)I can generate enough trim to make stocks 4)I can generate "schmaltz" or chicken fat 5)Even with my labour calculated at $15/hr, I can still fabricate my chicken parts cheaper than ordering pre-fabricated parts Same goes with fish, and for primal cuts cuts of beef or pork

What I have seen in professional pastry shops is a common plumber's blow torch. Chocolatiers frequently use a technique called "slabbing" to crystalize ganaches, basically moving it around on a marble slab. Obviously the slab needs to be cleaned to avoid flavour transfer. The slab is scraped clean with a plastic scraper, then heated up briefly with the torch, then wiped clean with paper towels. It is then sanitized with 100 % alcohol....

Sometime around 1900, US publishers decided to drop weight based measurement while publishers in the Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Greece, Japan, China, Korea, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and many more countries continued to publish weight-based recipes for home and professional use. Eh... no. Not Canada at least. Take a look at any Canadian non-professional "Cook book", cooking magazine, or "recipie" printed on the back of a food item package, and everything is in volume--except chocolate which is in ounces or 28 gr squares. Butter is still measured in tablespoons or the metric equivilent, as is sticky, messy items like corn syrup, honey, peanut butter, etc. A point to ponder though.... You buy your flour, sugar, salt, etc by weight, as you do your meat and most produce. Is it practical then, that any professional would do inventory or recipie costing based on volume while purchasing ingredients by weight?

Hi Gus, I've seen your post and request, but haven't had time to answer properly until now. If you want--but only if you want to, here's how to "play" with the big boys: Find about 8 or 9 items that you do a lot of volume on, figure out your consumption per, say 6 mths or per year, then call up one of the boys, give them your consumption rates and what you're willing to pay for those items. You're not asking them for a price now, you are telling them to match or better another price. Big difference. But as one small indie operator to another, I ask, "Why?" Why do you want to play with the big boys? After well over thirty years in this business, and almost half of that time running my own business, I have made this one observation regarding the big boy broadliners: -Giants play best with other giants. That's not to say we all can't get along, but at the end of the day, it's the little guy who goes home feeling like he got the dirty end of the stick. My business is based on the "apples and oranges" model: If Johnny across the street is selling apples, then the thing for me to do is to sell oranges. In other words, BE UNIQUE. By being unique, your customers can not compare your prices to Johnny's. Not only that, they will respect you for being unique. Chains operate on the reverse model of the above: Consistancy. That is, the customer in St. Louis can have the exact same dining experience as the customer in Minot, N.D. The chains and the big-boy broadliners go together like peanut butter and jelly, like tomatoes and basil. Giants playing with other giants. Head office negotiates prices for "thier" ingredients and the big boys deliver. Consistancy, yes, but it is all based on high volume. Everybody's happy. But the operator in Minot has to pay what head office negotiated for romaine lettuce or strawberries in January because that's what the Chain franchise contract stipulates. The Indie operator takes Caesar off the menu when prices for romaine are sky-high. Mineapolis/St. Paul is a large city. Where do all the grocery stores get their merchandise? The ethnic delis and Bodegas, where do they get their merchandise? And the bakeries? Where do they get flour, dairy, eggs,and other supplies from? It's not the broadliners. Giants play best with other giants, and you and I are not giants. I get my supplies from many sources--Costco, yes, but bakery suppliers, indie distributers, neighborhood groceries, indie butchers, indie poultry suppliers, indie seafood..... When I ask for pricing, I get it, and very rarely do I get attitude. Small guys play best with small guys.....

Got rid of the bubble, stood it perfectly upright in the freezer for a few hours and it (bubble) was gone. DId some searching on-line and found out it is a fairly common problem,(separation, they call it) several websites advise tapping the bulb, smacking it gently in the palm of your hand, or swinging it abrupty. None of those techniques worked though... I even stood the bulb on the chocolate vibrator for a minute, but that didn't work either. Standing it upright in the freezer worked. The thermometers from Matfer aren't cheap, and are quite large (aprox 9" tall) and robust, I have the s/s 'cage" that slides over it, so I'm not ready to toss it out just yet. At the moment, I haven't found a "bricks and mortar" store that stocks these thermometers, and I live in a fairly large town. I know I can get replacements from Matfer or places like Chefrubber, but I'd have to put in an order of at least $150.00 to make it worthwhile to pay for shipping charges.